To hear Alfonso Cuarón tell it, when he first met Guillermo del Toro, more than 25 years ago, things weren’t all lovey-dovey: “I heard about this genius from Guadalajara and I was jealous. But apparently he felt the same way about me, this chilango, this guy from Mexico City!” Then there is the story of how del Toro was enlisted to help rescue Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2000 masterpiece, Amores Perros. “Years later, Alfonso called me up and said there’s this guy in Mexico who has this brilliant movie,” recalls del Toro, “but it’s really too long, and we thought the only guy who can talk sense into him is you!” The upshot? “I just showed up at his place,” del Toro laughs, “and I ate all the beans in the house!”

Listening to Cuarón with his compatriots del Toro, Iñárritu, and the cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki is like being at a family reunion where the tales have become legends. As Jonás Cuarón, Alfonso’s son, whose own film, Desierto, premiered this fall, puts it, “I grew up seeing them as uncles.” Impressively, the group has maintained its closeness and thrived together, from Mexico to Hollywood (a land of notoriously fair-weather friends). Cuarón and Lubezki both won Oscars for 2013’s Gravity, while Iñárritu won best director for last year’s Birdman (and Lubezki won again for best cinematography). Iñárritu and Lubezki are putting finishing touches on The Revenant, out in December, while del Toro’s new goth thriller, Crimson Peak, was tweaked over marathon Skype sessions with Cuarón. “Every time we see each other,” says Lubezki, “it’s like an explosion of creativity.”